Ordinary Differential Equations

Many modeling problems with engineering applications can be formulated using ordinary differential equations (ODEs). There are a few different definitions of differential equations. One of the simplest is “A differential equation is any equation which contains derivatives, either ordinary derivatives or partial derivatives,” as given in source [1]. From this definition, we can derive two types of differential equations—ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and partial differential equations (PDEs). ODEs contain one type of derivative or one independent variable and PDEs, on the contrary, contain two or more derivatives or independent variables. For example, first order ODEs can be expressed by: